The Undercover Mother_A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about love, friendship and parenting Read online

  He put down his plate and shook her hand, eagerly. ‘Simon Clarke. Unlimited Faces. I’m here representing a couple of new make-up brands.’

  ‘That’s perfect! You have new products, we have a new column!’ This was her chance. Jenny turned up the style dial. ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’

  Simon might be young but he seemed willing to play. ‘Well, I don’t have any samples with me, but…’ She saw him glance at her chest. Although this was totally inappropriate, Jenny felt a little pleased. She still had it.

  ‘Well, that’s a shame. I don’t have any hard copies, either – but you can take a look at my… blog.’

  This was supposed to sound a little flirty, but Simon was starting to twitch. And not in a good way.

  ‘Blog?’ he repeated, nervously.

  He was looking at her chest again. That was a bit much. But she needed something to go back to Eva with. Just keep going.

  ‘It’s aimed at first-time mothers. It’s funny. It’s different. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback already. I can come to your office and show you.’ She took out a business card and offered it to him.

  ‘Mothers? With babies?’ He looked at her boobs again and then at her face. ‘Uh, I’m not sure that it really fits with…’

  ‘Of course it does!’ Jenny flicked her hair back; she was getting into her stride. ‘Intelligent women. At home, with time on their hands. Who else can browse adverts like they do?’

  He was pulling at the collar of his shirt. ‘But our products are very glamorous and…’

  Jenny’s smile froze on her face. ‘And mothers aren’t glamorous?’ She tried not to sound irritated. ‘I’m a mother.’ And he’d been looking at her boobs for the last five minutes. ‘Do you not think mothers want to look good, too?’

  He looked horrified. ‘No, no, I wasn’t… I can see you are…’ Now he was desperately trying not to look below her neck. ‘I just need to… Let me just take your card. I’ll call if…’ He took the business card that Jenny offered him and almost ran away.

  Dammit. Jenny glanced around to see if Mark or Lucy had been near enough to witness her crash and burn. Eva had been caught by Jack Jenkins. She’d just have one more sausage and then go and rescue her.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  A waitress was hovering by Jenny’s elbow. Was there a ration on how many sausages you were allowed? ‘Yes?’

  ‘Er, I just thought you might want to know. You’ve got, er…’ She waved towards her own chest. ‘You’ve got… something, er… down your top.’

  Jenny looked down. Her face got very hot. On her chest were two huge milk stains.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, she was semi-prone beneath a hand-dryer when Eva came in to the Ladies’. With nothing much to do whilst drying, Jenny had sent a picture of the milk stains to the other mums; Antonia had sent back a picture of her Jimmy Choos covered in baby sick.

  ‘Should I even ask?’

  Jenny stood up and surveyed her bra region in the mirror. ‘Bloody breast pads leaked.’

  Eva shuddered. ‘A “no” would have sufficed. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Great.’ Jenny lied. ‘I’ve been giving my card out and I’m sure I’ll have some leads for the ad team once we have a launch date for the column.’

  Eva looked sceptical. ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘Well, there’s no point giving you names until…’ Jenny trailed off. She was tired. She was wet. And she didn’t have the energy for this right now.

  ‘Look, Jen, I know this isn’t the place, but we need to have a chat. The blog. It’s not really cutting it. Your writing is good, of course. It’s the content.’

  Jenny just nodded.

  ‘We’ve got a planning meeting in a couple of weeks. Come to that. Maybe there’s something else we could give you. Monday 24th, 10 a.m.’

  * * *

  Getting stuck in traffic was the perfect end to the day. Jenny turned on the radio and then turned if off again; she wasn’t in the mood for the DJ’s bright, chirpy voice. The tissue she had stuffed into her bra was a poor replacement for a breast pad and she could feel milk soaking through her top again.

  She didn’t want Eva to be right. It had surprised her how much she enjoyed writing the blog. Admittedly, it was less Eat, Pray, Love and more ‘Eat, Play, Sleep’. With a lot more poo. But it was fun finding the humour in it all, and the comments she’d had from complete strangers had really made her day.

  But none of this would matter to Eva: she had to think of the commercial side of things. And it seemed that she might have already decided that The Undercover Mother was never going to bring in the marketing bucks.

  Maybe Jenny was fooling herself with this whole thing. Maybe they were right about motherhood addling your brain. Was she wasting her time? Or did she just need a new angle? Up until then, The Undercover Mother had been about the realities of living with a new baby. But maybe she just needed to widen her net a little. Start to write a lot more about the personal lives of the mothers themselves.

  Like the mothers who were having problems with their in-laws. The mothers whose partners were not on the scene. The mothers who might have started an affair. Everyone liked to lift a rock and look at what was crawling underneath.

  It was time to go deep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  To prove their lineage, newborn babies are supposed to look like their fathers. Apparently, newborn Baby Sporty looked so much like Mr Sporty’s dad that, when she looked downwards at her bald baby, Sporty felt like she was breastfeeding her father-in-law. Scary tells us that her son bears a real resemblance to his dad, although she hasn’t been forthcoming with any evidence. And I am quite happy that The Boy looks just like Mr Baby.

  Posh, however, seems equally pleased that there are very few traces of Mr Posh in her baby anywhere. A few thousand years ago, that could have caused a lot of talk cave-side…

  From ‘The Undercover Mother’

  * * *

  ‘Bugger!’ Jenny jumped up, almost rolling Henry off the sofa they were lying on. She must have dozed off whilst trying to get him to take a nap. He woke up and started crying. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’

  The lounge was carnage and so was she. One side of her face was bright red and indented with the shape of the teething ring she’d somehow fallen asleep on. There was no time now for the shower she had planned to take whilst Henry slept – her flattened hair would just have to be scraped into a ponytail; she couldn’t keep her hat on in Antonia’s house. Now, where was the damn changing bag?

  Although the changing bag was huge and purple, it was surprising how often she lost it. Oh, how she longed for the days when leaving the house had just meant grabbing her keys, purse and phone. Now even a trip to the shops involved a level of packing and preparation which would have impressed Edmund Hillary. Plus, Edmund Hillary didn’t get to the front door of Everest and discover that one of his crew had pooped in their nappy and had to be stripped off and changed before they could start again.

  * * *

  Antonia’s lounge looked exactly as Jenny would have predicted: neutral, classic and expensive. It took her a few moments before she realised that, apart from baby Jessica lying on a play mat in front of the sofa, there was no baby paraphernalia anywhere. Jenny put Henry down on the mat beside Jessica as she took in the room.

  Naomi was sitting cross-legged on a voluminous sofa, feeding Daisy. ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘This is the grown-ups’ sitting room. There’s another “family room” with all the baby stuff.’

  Antonia came back in with Jenny’s tea (bone china mug – no chips), looking immaculate in white linen trousers and a navy top. With freshly washed hair.

  ‘Jessica has been fine. Not a whimper.’ Naomi placed Daisy next to the other babies on the mat.

  ‘That’s a relief. I don’t know what it is with her at the moment. Every time I leave the room she gets upset.’ Antonia knelt down and pressed her nose onto Jessica
’s, before sitting back on her heels and looking at Jenny. ‘I can’t believe it’s taken so long for me to invite you over. It’s just going to be the three of us. I did invite Ruth, but she understandably said she wasn’t up to it. And I shouldn’t think that…’ She was interrupted by the doorbell and looked surprised. ‘I’ll just go and get that.’

  When Antonia opened the door, they heard her say: ‘Oh, you came?’

  ‘I thought I was invited?’ Gail followed Antonia into the living room and nodded at Naomi and Jenny, before turning back to Antonia with a bemused expression.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course you were.’ Antonia was back in hostess mode. ‘I just thought you were back at work.’

  ‘Only part-time right now. We’ve been at Baby Sign.’ She laid Jake down on the mat with the other babies.

  When the others didn’t question what the hell that was, Jenny asked, ‘Baby Sign?’

  Gail sat down next to Jenny. She smelled of freshly ironed cotton, and her crisp white shirt next to Jenny’s crumpled one made them look like before and after pictures on a washing powder ad.

  ‘It’s a sign language course for babies.’

  Jenny nearly snorted her tea through her nose. ‘Seriously?’

  But Gail wasn’t joking. ‘Who knows if it works? But you have to take them to something. It might as well be something productive.’

  Jenny hadn’t even considered taking Henry to a baby group. She looked to the others for support, but they were both nodding.

  ‘We go to baby massage,’ said Naomi. ‘It’s a wonderful time of bonding. Organic oils, obviously.’

  Even Antonia was at it. ‘I’m taking Jessica swimming at my gym.’

  Sign language? Baby massage? Swimming? Jenny looked at Henry, kicking his legs on the expensive-looking quilt. Why hadn’t she known she was supposed to be taking him to these places? What else were they missing out on?

  Whilst Antonia made Gail a black coffee, Naomi extolled the virtues of baby massage until Daisy saved them by rolling onto Henry’s arm.

  ‘Crikey, she’s rolling already?’ Jenny had had an email from a baby website which said:

  ‘Your baby might try to roll this week!’

  She’d spent the last two days trying to tempt Henry onto his side by calling his name, shaking rattles and, she was ashamed to admit, lying down next to him with her boob out, asking him if he wanted any milk.

  ‘Yep. She’s never in the same place I left her.’ Naomi moved Daisy back to where she’d started.

  Gail nodded towards Henry. ‘He looks exactly like Dan.’

  For some weird reason, Jenny loved it when people noticed that. ‘I know. I sometimes wonder if he got any of my genes at all. Does Jake look like Joe?’

  Gail held her son’s kicking foot. ‘He does, actually.’

  Antonia reappeared with the coffee. ‘Does he?’ She looked at Jake and then at Jessica, who was wriggling towards him. ‘Jess doesn’t look anything like Geoff, thank God.’

  Antonia was right: her little girl was fair like her rather than dark like Geoff. She also had Antonia’s blue eyes and perfect nose.

  Jenny had read about this when she’d been trawling for blog ideas. ‘I thought all babies were supposed to look like their father?’

  Gail nodded. ‘I heard that, too. Cave dads needed proof. No Jeremy Kyle DNA tests back then.’

  ‘I also read that one in ten doubt they are the father of their child.’ As she said it, Jenny realised how tactless that sounded after Antonia’s comment. ‘But surely that can’t be true?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s entirely possible,’ said Antonia. ‘Affairs happen all the time. Goodness, at least three of Geoff’s colleagues have been caught out.’

  ‘Do you think the women know when their husband isn’t the father?’ Jenny’s journalistic instinct was twitching like a rabbit’s nose.

  Antonia shrugged. ‘Maybe they don’t want to know for sure.’

  ‘What about the other man? Surely he’d want to know if the baby was his?’ Jenny pressed.

  ‘Really?’ Antonia raised an eyebrow. ‘Isn’t that a little naive? Do you really think a man who sleeps with married women wants to be saddled with a child?’

  ‘I think that’s naive.’ Gail tapped her fingers on her folded arms. ‘Fatherhood can change a man.’

  Antonia turned to look at her. ‘Really? Have you got an example? Is Joe a hands-on dad?’

  Jenny winced at Antonia’s tone, though she was also desperate to know what was going on, even more so since Dan had interrupted her conversation with Gail in IKEA.

  But Gail met Antonia’s eyes. ‘I’ve told you before. Joe works away a great deal.’

  Before Antonia could ask anything else, Naomi interrupted. ‘John’s a great dad,’ she said.

  And then she burst into tears.

  * * *

  Once Antonia had brought in a box of tissues and made another cup of tea, Naomi was more composed.

  ‘We’re okay, really. It’s just that he works so much that sometimes I feel like I’m doing this on my own.’

  Jenny knew better than to mention Naomi’s helpful in-laws. Unfortunately, Antonia didn’t. ‘Doesn’t his family live close to you? Can’t they have the baby?’

  Naomi grimaced and fiddled with the beads around her neck. ‘That is part of the problem. His mother visits us all the time.’ She paused for emphasis. ‘All. The. Time.’

  ‘Is she still doing it? Can’t you just tell her that you’re busy, or going out?’ Gail was unlikely to put up with such behaviour.

  ‘I do. As often as I can, but she just turns up unannounced.’ She mimicked a high old-lady voice: ‘Only me, Naomi! I was just passing and thought I’d see if you needed anything.’ She dropped the impression. ‘Then she comes in and starts—’ she waved her arms in the air ‘—tidying up, folding washing, clearing the draining board.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too terrible to me.’ Jenny had a Kilimanjaro of dirty crockery waiting for her at home. ‘Why don’t you leave her downstairs with the baby and take the opportunity to go and have a sleep or a shower?’

  Naomi shook her head again. ‘That would be like admitting defeat – she already thinks I am some kind of hippy with no idea how to raise a child.’

  Jenny almost blushed. She’d referred to Naomi as a hippy more than once. But no one could say she didn’t know how to raise a child. She was practically a baby whisperer.

  ‘If I hear one more time, “John liked to nap straight after lunch. John was always better if I left him to sleep in his own cot. John didn’t like being held like that…” I am going to… to… flip.’

  Antonia smirked seductively. ‘Maybe try telling her a few things John likes nowadays that she might not be aware of, and see how she likes that, darling.’

  Naomi smiled a watery smile.

  Jenny thanked her lucky stars that Dan’s parents lived in another county. They were nice, but she couldn’t imagine having them hovering over her every day. It was unlikely to ever be a problem; if they suggested visiting more than twice in a month, Dan would threaten to turn out the lights and lie down behind the sofa.

  Gail was more forthright. ‘If you can’t tell her, then John needs to. He’s not a little boy, for goodness’ sake.’

  Naomi shook her head. ‘That’s never going to happen. John isn’t one for standing up to people. He’d no sooner tell his mother not to come around than take on a rabid dog. Plus, he says she’s just trying to help.’

  ‘You have to do something, though.’ Antonia put her mug on the table. ‘You can’t have her popping in like that forever. You could be doing anything.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I mean. Can you imagine if you were—’

  ‘—cleaning the toilet?’ finished Jenny, in an attempt to lighten the mood. Not that she was likely to be found cleaning. Or the thing that Antonia was suggesting.

  Naomi nodded. ‘You’re right. I agree completely.’ She paused. ‘Maybe it would be easier if I didn’t live so close t
o them. I mean, familiarity breeds contempt and all that.’ She leaned forwards and started to fiddle with the straps on Daisy’s dungarees. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking of leaving. Moving back home to Bristol.’

  That was a surprise. Moving? Naomi had mentioned in their WhatsApp group that John worked for his father. ‘How will John get to work from there?’

  Naomi was still adjusting Daisy’s straps in an attempt not to meet anyone’s eye. ‘I meant just me and Daisy.’

  There was a silence. No one knew what to say.

  ‘That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’ Jenny felt the need to fill the silence. ‘Leaving John just because he has an overly familiar mother.’

  ‘It’s not just that. I don’t think it’s working out with me and John. Whatever we had when we met doesn’t seem to be enough. We hardly spend any time together at all.’

  ‘It’s a bit like that for all of us, though, isn’t it?’ Jenny hoped this was true. ‘New baby, being knackered, not sure what we’re doing. I shouldn’t think any of us are winning “Romantic of the Year” right now. I know I’m not. Most evenings I can be found snoring on the sofa, or going to bed early wearing M&S pyjamas and bed socks. Dan would need to be a serious fetishist to find that alluring.’

  ‘Oh, we still have sex.’ Naomi’s expression suggested it was ridiculous to think that they might not. ‘That’s not the problem. I do love him. But I might have a better life back with my parents.’

  * * *

  Jenny drove the long way home in the hope that Henry would fall asleep. With all the issues at work, she hadn’t realised she had been neglecting his development. Was Daisy rolling already because the baby massage was expanding her mind? She had visions of Henry starting school alongside second-language-speaking, yoga-demonstrating geniuses whilst he had only just mastered a sippy cup. She was a terrible mother.